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To Stew Carrots Brown

A stew of carrots simmered in gravy, mushroom ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, and seasoned with pepper and salt, finished with a flour‑butter roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Stew Carrots Brown

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Wash and scrape the carrots well.

  2. Boil the carrots in water for 30 minutes.

  3. Drain and cut each carrot into round balls.

Stew

  1. Place the carrot balls in a stewpan with the gravy, pepper, salt, mushroom ketchup, and Worcestershire sauce.

  2. Simmer for 20 minutes.

Thicken and serve

  1. Remove the carrots and pile them in the center of a dish.

  2. Thicken the gravy with flour and butter, then pour it over the carrots and serve.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Carrot + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,796 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Form the main body of the dish and provide sweetness and a tender texture when simmered.
Gravy
Provides the savory liquid that the carrots absorb during simmering.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the carrots instead of running off the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the thickened gravy a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Simmering the carrots in the gravy. Simmering gently lets the carrots absorb the seasoned gravy while staying intact. A hard boil can break the carrot pieces apart and make the gravy cloudy or reduce too quickly.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, mushroom, ketchup, sauce, flour, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mushroom, ketchup, sauce, flour, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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